~ Thinking outside the box about Cambodia

Monthly Archives: September 2015

You certainly have read Pope Francis’s speech at the United Nations on the early morning of Friday 25 September 2015 and in front of high-level representatives of 171 Member States.

Since representatives of Cambodia are at the United Nations Headquarters, there is very little doubt that they were not at the General Assembly Hall sitting behind the country name plate “Cambodia” and honoring this historical celebration in the annals of world diplomacy by directly hearing every word of his.

Hope you fully discuss this event with your poli sci students and gear them to understand the big picture of world politics and diplomacy. Although the issues that Pope Francis elaborated are worldwide and global issues, they are well related to contemporary Cambodia which not only cannot escape this “globality and internationality” but also be fully dependent on it.

Let us take a moment and extract parts of Pope Francis’s speech that focus, inter alia, on 3 topics: environment, justice and war, that would require the leaders of Cambodia to look into their own mirror and ask themselves “Have I done all that for Cambodia and Cambodians?If not, then, why?”:

“… I also greet the citizens of all the nations represented in this hall…”

“… The work of the United Nations, according to the principles set forth in the Preamble and the first Articles of its founding Charter, can be seen as the development and promotion of the rule of law, based on the realization that justice is an essential condition for achieving the ideal of universal fraternity. In this context, it is helpful to recall that the limitation of power is an idea implicit in the concept of law itself. To give to each his own, to cite the classic definition of justice, means that no human individual or group can consider itself absolute, permitted to bypass the dignity and the rights of other individuals or their social groupings. The effective distribution of power (political, economic, defense-related, technological, etc.) among a plurality of subjects, and the creation of a juridical system for regulating claims and interests, are one concrete way of limiting power. Yet today’s world presents us with many false rights and – at the same time – broad sectors which are vulnerable, victims of power badly exercised: for example, the natural environment and the vast ranks of the excluded. These sectors are closely interconnected and made increasingly fragile by dominant political and economic relationships. That is why their rights must be forcefully affirmed, by working to protect the environment and by putting an end to exclusion.

“First, it must be stated that a true “right of the environment” does exist, for two reasons. First, because we human beings are part of the environment. We live in communion with it, since the environment itself entails ethical limits which human activity must acknowledge and respect. Man, for all his remarkable gifts, which “are signs of a uniqueness which transcends the spheres of physics and biology” (Laudato Si’, 81), is at the same time a part of these spheres. He possesses a body shaped by physical, chemical and biological elements, and can only survive and develop if the ecological environment is favorable. Any harm done to the environment, therefore, is harm done to humanity. Second, because every creature, particularly a living creature, has an intrinsic value, in its existence, its life, its beauty and its interdependence with other creatures. We Christians, together with the other monotheistic religions, believe that the universe is the fruit of a loving decision by the Creator, who permits man respectfully to use creation for the good of his fellow men and for the glory of the Creator; he is not authorized to abuse it, much less to destroy it. In all religions, the environment is a fundamental good (cf. ibid.).

“The misuse and destruction of the environment are also accompanied by a process of exclusion. In effect, a selfish and boundless thirst for power and material prosperity leads both to the misuse of available natural resources and to the exclusion of the weak and disadvantaged, either because they are differently abled (handicapped), or because they lack adequate information and technical expertise, or are incapable of decisive political action. Economic and social exclusion is a complete denial of human fraternity and a grave offense against human rights and the environment. The poorest are those who suffer most from such offenses, for three serious reasons: they are cast off by society, forced to live off what is discarded and suffer unjustly from the abuse of the environment. They are part of today’s widespread and quietly growing “culture of waste”.

” … Solemn commitments, however, are not enough, even though they are a necessary step toward solutions. The classic definition of justice which I mentioned earlier contains as one of its essential elements a constant and perpetual will: Iustitia est constans et perpetua voluntas ius sum cuique tribuendi. Our world demands of all government leaders a will which is effective, practical and constant, concrete steps and immediate measures for preserving and improving the natural environment and thus putting an end as quickly as possible to the phenomenon of social and economic exclusion, with its baneful consequences…”

” … It must never be forgotten that political and economic activity is only effective when it is understood as a prudential activity, guided by a perennial concept of justice and constantly conscious of the fact that, above and beyond our plans and programmes, we are dealing with real men and women who live, struggle and suffer, and are often forced to live in great poverty, deprived of all rights.”

“… The ecological crisis, and the large-scale destruction of biodiversity, can threaten the very existence of the human species. The baneful consequences of an irresponsible mismanagement of the global economy, guided only by ambition for wealth and power, must serve as a summons to a forthright reflection on man: “man is not only a freedom which he creates for himself. Man does not create himself. He is spirit and will, but also nature.”

“… War is the negation of all rights and a dramatic assault on the environment. If we want true integral human development for all, we must work tirelessly to avoid war between nations and between peoples.”

“… El Gaucho Martín Fierro, a classic of literature in my native land, says: “Brothers should stand by each other, because this is the first law; keep a true bond between you always, at every time – because if you fight among yourselves, you’ll be devoured by those outside.”

“Upon all of you, and the peoples you represent, I invoke the blessing of the Most High, and all peace and prosperity. Thank you.

Rumors are floating in the Pochentong airport that something oddly and incongruously Cambodian might happen in the Big Apple, the Headquarters of the United Nations: while the big nabob who leads the Cambodian delegation to the United Nations 70th General Assembly and the “United Nations Sustainable Development Summit-2015” would be by now in New York (“When a small fish….” refers), a delegation of the opposition party would also be in the same city almost at the same time.

Whether the 2 sides coordinate their foreign trips independently or otherwise, or whether they will quietly or noisily cross each other’s path in the streets of New York, each side will certainly have something to say about the other. Nothing is new about that!

But Kacvey, the political campaign habit has been that when the opposition party arrives in any city or town in the US, its members rarely missed the opportunities to visit the Buddhist temple(s) of that city or town either to pay respect to Buddha (twai bangkoum prèah) or for fund-raising among their faithful supporters and sympathizers, Buddhists or otherwise. Would the 2 groups then spare some times to visit the 2 Khmer Buddhist temples in the Big Apple and to chat with their congregants as an extension of the so-called culture of dialog?

Rumour is abuzz in the City of Tonlé Buon Mouk that a very high-level Cambodian delegation would be at the Headquarters of the United Nations to participate in the celebration of its 70th anniversary and the Sustainable Development Summit 2015 scheduled for 25 -27 September 2015. It has also been heard that the Cambodian delegation is scheduled to address the General Assembly of the United Nations in the morning of 2 October 2015…. when most of the biggies will have already left town!

Well, with Pope Francis addressing the same General Assembly on 26 September in front of about 171 heads of state, presidents and prime ministers, it would be very interesting to see or to learn how the head of the Cambodian delegation interacts with those world personalities in this august world diplomatic arena … and outside and far, far away from the podium of Koh Pich. When a small fish swims in a very big pond with all types of big and very big Incidentally, more than 2300 years ago, Confucius told his disciples how small a man is in the universe through this metaphor of his: “登东山而小鲁国，登泰山而小天下”

Kacvey, would you remember at one very recent time, the big nabob boasted that he could teach some presidents, prime ministers or ambassadors of some democracies about ruling a country without change? Hope that in September 2015 at the United nations he could match his words with his deeds!

Would you also warn your law school students to carefully search what would be Cambodia contributions in the preparation and participation in the Sustainable Development Summit 2015, and the 6 Interactive Dialogues? Who would be the experts to carry the Cambodian flag, ideas and proposals?

Or as you know it very well, in any big meeting, there always are people who just show up for photo ops for posterity usage!!

Hope that the Cambodian delegation would receive the warmest welcome from overseas Khmer who are sympathizers, supporters or members of the ruling party!

You are forewarned that this is not about your back which, at least according to the most recent medical report is not that bad, but it is about the back and front of the justice system in Cambodia that has been diagnosed by the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI) as extremely bad and is in need of a major overhaul if true justice is to be served to the Cambodian people.

You may also wish to give an assignment to your law school students to open the link below and to read the content through (text available in English and also in Khmer) in order to get the full extent of the report (72 pages) issued this month by the above IBAHRI. The report title is: “Justice versus corruption. Challenges to the independence of the judiciary in Cambodia.”

And please do not let any of your students escape this assignment if he/she is really a true student at heart who cares about Cambodia. Who knows, some of your students might one day become barristers or judges and not want to be classified in or associated with this group of rotten fish. As a forward to the assignment, you may also draw your students’ attention to one of Albert Einstein’s reflections which goes as follows: “In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.”

The reading of the report being done – the acronym BAKC deciphered – it will be no surprise to your students that all the issues or cases raised in the report are already known to them and to every Cambodian, in urban area or countryside, because if the cases are not known to Cambodians, there is no way the IBAHRI lawyers would get a hold on it. Let them, then, debate among themselves, formulate their own opinion and learn from the way outsiders perceive justice in Cambodia. Learning from criticism is similar to learning from failure or defeat. And with such a devastating finding and conclusion, how would BAKC itself be judged by their peers in future on the international arena?

The same also holds true that the issue of lack of justice and the deficient justice system in Cambodia are known to every living soul with the exception of those who hold justice in their autocratic hands. Kacvey, how often have you heard those in power talk about justice or “yutéthor” in their daily dealings with the public or the electorate?

Autocracy using its own police and armed forces creates its own justice system to oppress, incarcerate and eliminate voices of reason that go against their personal interests and those of their clan. Kangaroo court is what they establish and run to serve their purpose.

36 years after the KR abolished all systems of law and justice in the land of the Khmer, it has been 36 years that the principles of law and justice have been disregarded or perverted by those who have been governing Cambodia. There is nothing to be proud of. Respect of human dignity is relegated to the bottom of the priorities ladder for social development and harmony among the Khmer who live under the yoke of the justice by the powerful.

Frederick Douglas, once said: “Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”

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Update: the link below adds more weight to the IBARHI report: http://www.phnompenhpost.com/business/corrupt-judiciary-putting-investment-businesses-say

Your poli sci students must be elated in their study of contemporary British politics with today’s landslide victory and arrival of Jeremy Corbyn as the new Labour Party leader. 5 months have elapsed after the resignation of the previous leader, Ed Miliband, who led the party towards a disastrous failure and defeat at the May 2015 parliamentary elections.

How Corbyn will dauntingly lead Labour is an exclusive issue for British labourites, but how Corbyn came to lead Labour is an exercise that honors not only democracy in its fullest meaning, but also an example of how British labourites chose their leader through a revised democratic and competitive process and consider that the party does not belong to any particular person or group of persons as at-large party members are sovereign to choose and elect their leader. What can be learned from the chain of Labour leadership history from 1997 to today is that:

no leader is made of stone and unmovable,

no leader is irreplaceable,

party leadership is not a monopoly, a private property or ownership, and

party is a collective entity with members responsibly sharing the same political ideology, conviction and aspiration and serving a national and common cause.

If later on, it turns out that Corbyn’s leadership is a failure, there will no doubt be that British labourites will show him the door and elect a new leader. As Abraham Lincoln said: “No man is good enough to govern another man without the other’s consent.”

Kacvey, you might well recall our correspondence dated 10 May 2015 on what preceded today’s event in the British Labour Party:

Please do not tell your students to copy the British model in their debates on Khmer political parties, but rather suggest them to find out why, since 1953, Khmer political parties regardless of their size and shape:

have always been a party of “a man” but never of idea, ideology or principle, and therefore are not grassroot driven?

can never sustain survival after their defeat or departure of their original founder? and

are created as a disguised enterprise to deceive the innocent and honest Khmer people and to benefit the party leaders and their friends and relatives in their quest for personal fame and fortune?

By the way, Kacvey, the news from Canberra – where members of the Khmer ruling and opposition parties go to very often – could also be used by your students in the same debates, as in just over two years, Australia has seen four prime ministers, one after another being swiftly removed or ousted by the members of their own party: Kevin Rudd out, Julia Gillard in; Julia Gillard out, Tony Abbott in; Tony Abbott out, Malcolm Turnbull in.

An American satirist, Henry Louis Mencken, once said: “No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man.”

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Update – 19 October 2015

In Canada, the Liberal Party (Justin Trudeau) won a landslide over the Conservative Party (Stephen Harper) who, at the concession speech said: “The people are never wrong”; he further added: “The disappointment is my responsibility and mine alone.” Then he stepped down as Conservative Party leader.

Could Cambodian politicians learn about “change” and that “political seats” in parliament are not private properties!

Because in the preparation towards the 2017 and 2018 elections – Cambodian politicians live in a permanent state of elections as they do not know and have what else to do without the electoral campaign – the ruling party has made it known that it is rolling out big mikes and big speakers and boom boxes to re-sell its unmarketable and unsold ideology and politics. The party has decided to set up a kind of new “committee for education and propaganda”, a machinery that was very much in use in once-upon-a-time socialist or communist regime.

The said committee would be going to be run by noticeable, trustworthy and old blood party members such as ministers (relations with the national assembly and the senate, the national education), the anti-corruption czar, the super cop, the web master (please refer to the “The Web Challenge” of 5 June 2015), an official spokesperson etc …

But even if this is the case, does this mean an open acknowledgement that the party since 1979 lives and runs without ideology, principles and theories? Or a self-confirmation of an autocracy and totalitarianism with iron hands and without heart? Or a parliamentary democracy only in name but quasi-dictatorial in acts?

Anyway, Khmer people are much smarter than what these people would think; if with the podium at Koh Pich, the tv and radio stations, the majority at the national assembly and the senate, the government, the governmental and para-governmental agencies they own and run for 30-years-plus, and they have just realized that the people of the Khmer land do not buy to their policies and governance, they must be blind and deaf to see and hear the voice and the scream of realities throughout the land.

The Khmer people are neither blind nor deaf, but they have the common sense of a rational and sane race dating back to the time of Chenla. They have seen their dream for a better life deceived not only in their lifetime but also for their descendants, their rights violated and demolished, their land taken away, their forest razed to the ground, justice denied to them, corruption level higher than Phnoum Kulen or Bokor, the truth killed and murdered. They have heard lies and broken promises again and again, the sound of distress of their neighbors who lost their meager properties to the big interests (domestic and/or foreign), the sound of guns fired towards them by their own countrymen, the siren for call for respect of democracy, basic rights and justice.

While the “committee for education and propaganda” is about to be underway, the big nabob launched a bigger salvo way ahead of the elections warning everybody who can hear and see that his party will not win less than 60% of seats in whatever institution; he even threatened that the country will enter into a war if his party fails to return to power, but he stopped short of suggesting who the enemies are. Buts there is an assumption that “once a KR, always a KR”, no matters how the black trousers and shirts are changed and traded to suits.

Khmer people know long ago that this is not rocket sciences: simple equation it is. In 2013, the losers – remember the 63% announced by the minister of information just as the polls closed the doors – boycotted the national assembly and preferred the street and Freedom Park; the same scenario would repeat again in 2017 or 2018 as history repeats itself, but this time with different protagonists. History also told Khmer people that, in January 1979, the KR was not kicked out of the City of Tonlé Buon Mouk by ex-KR who rebelled against the KR, but by the soldiers coming from the Eastern neighborhood supporting the ex-KR. This history would likely repeat itself again, as the bond and debt between the ruling party and this neighbor remain stronger than the chain that bonds the ruling party with the Khmer people.

9 members of the nec – independent and dependents – beware! Please take note of the marching order! 60% or more. Got it?!

Kacvey, since it is true that this is what they are going to do, it is also true that Khmer people cannot be led to believe anything anymore.

Here are a few words of wisdom from Hubert H. Humphrey: “Propaganda, to be effective, must be believed. To be believed, it must be credible. To be credible, it must be true.”

How would you and other faculty members feel if a new lecturer is appointed to teach a newly created course in political sciences called “How not to change – 101”? Worst, how would all of you feel if the newly created course is also arrogantly initiated and imposed by the new lecturer himself?

Apparently on 11 August, it was reported in the local press that the new would-be lecturer artlessly disclosed that he would and could like to be a teacher in world politics and would also like to see his intended corps of students be prominent personalities such as ambassadors, presidents and prime ministers of countries where democracy, justice, and rule of laws are not just vain words.

If he feels like being an able teacher, why not! His résumé, so far, would seem quite impressive as boasted by himself: ex-guerrilla, ex-KR, over-30-years as a leader of an autocracy, no academic background but graduated doctor honoris causa, polyglot including the Vietnamese language, èk-odom, leader of the ruling party, deputy, 5-star general, minister, samdach and prime minister. The only missing title or qualification would be “préah” or head of state. Kacvey, with such an incomparable résumé, any head hunter would have no difficulty in attracting the attention of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government or the Fontainebleau INSEAD! … if he does not use the minority leader as a reference!

It was also reported that the new would-be lecturer is tired of hearing foreign countries and democracies telling him that Cambodia should go through some changes as time and people change all the times. Well, in reverse psychology, the new position as lecturer that he granted himself could well be construed as the expression of his secret desire and of his tiredness from politics, and he veered himself towards a second career as a teacher! What a noble decision! He will touch the future! Welcome to the world of education!

So doing, he would greatly honor the spirit of Maimonides whose famous saying is still valid from the 12th century in Spain to today: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

Kacvey, during the next meeting of faculty members, please make sure that (1) an honorable seat would be reserved for him, a-savvy-politician-turned-instructor! and (2) he also is responsible for an additional course to be titled “How not to uproot corruption -101”

Regardless of how much he would like to teach, do not forget these words from Horace Mann: “A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.”

Would you by any chance happen to know whether in the City of Tonlé Buon Mouk there would be a census to take stocks of how many “samdachs” and “oknhas” there are in the current Khmer nomenclature or Who-is-Who?

You may ask why this question? Because it seems that Khmer leaders, in the quest for their own higher and more sublime self-glorification, wanted to raise the cathedra of their title to another level of dais they are now occupying. It also seems that they have found a new altar for a trivial deification of an insignificant and common human!

Although, even if the news was almost 2-months old, it is without a doubt that this group of people have brewed and nurtured the idea long before they voluntarily and timely put out for public consumption. Many thanks to “Thmey Thmey” and hope that they still keep it in their e-library!

Kacvey, could you please spare some times to go to our village pagoda to inquire with our old folks and stalwarts who strongly and faithfully support our religion how a mere mortal, without having done anything during his whole lifetime for the good of Khmer humanity – except for his own egoism! – could become a “préah”?

Well, since the world is populated with humans – all saints and angels being in heaven, others in Hades, as it has been said! – let us fathom on a saying by Diogenes: “Man is the most intelligent of the animals, and the most silly.”

And furthermore, as recorded by Diogenes Laertius (not the same person as the above “Diogenes”) “To someone who was talking about astronomical matters, Diogenes said, ‘And how many days did it take you to get down from the sky?’